Index checking in FrameMaker

[John Gough <John_Gough -at- CCMAIL -dot- BMC -dot- COM>]

Have you ever wanted to check how a particular page is indexed?  It's a
little hard to do from the standard generated index.

I like to use a per-page index to check each page's index entries, mainly
as a means of determining whether that page has proper coverage.  It's a
device I picked up from a contract indexer. It can come in especially
handy when you're doing revisions of a book that you didn't write.

The following directions describe how to set up a per-page index for a
single *file*.  You can set one up for a whole book through the usual means
of adding a generated file to a book. You'd need to delete the file from
the book file before sending the book to production.

1. Open the file.
2. Select File>Generate/Book
3. In the Generate/Book dialog:
   * Select "List of Markers" from the List: pulldown.
   * Click Generate
4. In the Set Up List of Markers Dialog:
   * add "Index" to the Include Markers of Type list
   * turn off Create Hypertext Links
     (optional--leaving them on will allow you to
     jump to a particular entry from the list)
   * click Generate

An LOM file will be created.  However, by default, it shows the entry
first, then the page number, like this:
---------------------------------------------------------
installation:planning;planning your installation 1
product selection;selecting products 3
ALTER:product description;product description:ALTER;major functions:ALTER 3
---------------------------------------------------------
It's easier to read if the page number is listed first and separated:

1. In the LOM file:
   * Select View>Reference Pages
   * Scroll to the IndexLOM paragraph tag
2. Reverse the order the tags <$markertext> and <$pagenum>
3. Insert a tab between the tags
4. To make the list more readable, I change the IndexLOM
   paragraph tag:
   BASIC:  * First 0.0, Left 0.5
           * Add a tab at 0.5
   Make the changes in both the Reference Page and the Body
   Pages
5. Regenerate the list (from the document file, not the LOM
   file!)
6. Voila.  You should see something like this:
---------------------------------------------------------
1  installation:planning;planning your installation
3  product selection;selecting products
3  ALTER:product description;product description:ALTER;major
   functions:ALTER
---------------------------------------------------------
It would be nice if the index were more in index format for readability,
but I haven't found a way to do that.  Seeing the actual Index marker text
is useful for debugging, anyway.

Have fun.
John Gough
BMC Software
Austin, TX
john_gough -at- bmc -dot- com